


Im Krieg

by hobbitts



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Gen, World War II
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-05-17
Updated: 2013-05-17
Packaged: 2017-12-12 02:59:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/806391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hobbitts/pseuds/hobbitts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>WWII era Crowley & Aziraphale</p>
            </blockquote>





	Im Krieg

Dusk was settling on no-man’s-land, turning the sky the same color as the blood that leaked from the wounds of a hundred soldiers below. Aziraphale trudged on through the mire of mud and water stagnating at the bottom of the trench. His tartan vest had been left under a dying man’s head several hours back, along with some of the last dregs of energy he could muster. The lines on his face were more pronounced than they had been in a good century. Corpses were piled high along the sides of the ditch, faces dirtied, disfigured, or simply not there at all. Their pale white skin stood out against the base hues of the turf. Aziraphale solemnly brushed past them. Death certainly had his work cut out for him. 

The languid buzzing of an airplane went almost unnoticed by Aziraphale until its deadly cargo exploded no less than a hundred meters from where he stood. It took him a great deal of willpower to slosh through the waist-deep water at faster than a snail's pace. Everything was slow and foggy and kept sliding out of focus no matter how hard he concentrated. The groans and screams of the dying heralded his approach, and the angel's face crumpled in under the weight of sorrow and absolute frustration. Two weeks on this forsaken human battleground had taken its toll and a shiver of despair bent him double as he felt Death's presence wash over the vicinity.

"So many, so _many_ …" he whispered. If Crowley had been here, he would have asked him “ _Why_ so many?” and Aziraphale would have replied with the well-rehearsed and overused explanation of “Ineffable, my dear boy.” But Crowley was not here. Crowley was probably sitting in a bureau in the middle of Germany sipping on fine wine and scrawling incorrect calculations on classified papers for the weight of a bomber about to take off that would send it crashing down in to earth and explode in a ball of fiery—

A pained, hoarse cough brought his mind back to the Crimean peninsula. Aziraphale looked down. Blood was leaking from the corner of the man’s mouth and it looked like half of his body was missing.

Aziraphale placed a comforting hand on the cheek of a dying soldier, whose face went slack as his soul was lifted from its mortal housing and was placed in the arms of a shadowy figure. 

THERE ARE INDEED MANY. Aziraphale cast his gaze upwards and caught the blurred outline of Death, hunched over the lip of the trench. He carried the souls gently in his arms.  
MANY, MANY HORRORS GREATER THAN THOSE WHICH YOU HAVE WITNESSED HERE, ANGEL. The voice echoed in Aziraphale's mind.

"What horrors?" he asked wearily. It was his duty to know, he needed to know, yet a part of him wished he could evade the information and pretend it never happened. He wasn't afraid of humans, that wasn't it, but he was just so incredibly tired...

Aziraphale grasped a man's limp hand to pull him up from under the water, only to find the owner had left the appendage at the elbow. He dropped the limb and repeated, grimly, "What horrors?"

So Death opened his omnipresent sight to Aziraphale and calmly watched as the angel sank to his knees and brought his hands to his face in agony. The cries of the innocent pounded at his ears and the despair, despair, desp—

Death cut him off and raised his haggard head to the skies. WAR HAS NO INTENT ON STOPPING, said Death, and in a flash of a moment his corporeal representation vanished. His presence lingered, though, in the sweat and tears of those who suffered so greatly they begged him to return. 

It took Aziraphale a long time to find his footing again. He was completely drenched, his clothes sticking uncomfortably to him, glasses lost somewhere back in ground turned muddy with blood. The detached hand bobbed serenely down the trench.

It was almost as bad as the slaughter of the innocents under Herod. Or the Pharaoh. Or when Death had taken the lives of the firstborn in Egypt. ( _Ineffable_ , Aziraphale reminded himself.) But the _scale_ of this...

The screams of children and crackling furnaces had driven into his head like a pike. He looked to the sky and the bloated clouds became smoke and billowing human ash, the far-off thunder turning to the crack of haphazard gunshots. The apparitions of humiliated and hopeless victims ran amok across his vision.

Aziraphale was torn from his hallucinations as another explosion rocked the trench, bits of dirt and less pleasant organic debris showering him. Painstakingly, he dragged himself over while repeating a mantra of prayer for the souls whose eternal fate would soon be decided. 

A soldier discovered that he had miraculously survived the blast unscathed; although he was sure his skull should have caved in like his comrade’s. A dislocated shoulder set itself. Torn flesh and arteries sewed themselves together. One lieutenant later recounted how he saw a bright figure walking amongst them and swore it was the holy archangel Michael (it was an excusable mistake; they admittedly did look similar, both blond-haired, although Aziraphale was a bit more heavy-set and didn’t exude such obvious eternal praise from his pores).

And then the world flipped as the dirty grimness of Sevastopol was replaced with the pristine grimness of a floodlit Nazi concentration camp.

Aziraphale shook his head as he settled back uncomfortably into his body; teleporting like this always felt extremely awkward. He shifted from foot to foot as he surveyed the barracks upon barracks that surrounded the small square in which he stood. The cobblestones under his feet were larger and more uneven than he’d expected—and that’s when Aziraphale realized they weren’t cobblestones at all. They were tombstones. He blinked. The tombstones remained—not some symbolic ethereal message after all. An involuntary shudder ran through him.

It was also quieter than Aziraphale had expected. Quiet, but not the peaceful quiet: it was the silence of those frozen in fear.

The first barrack was filled with women huddled together under threadbare blankets and straw and each other. Aziraphale eased the pain of arthritis from an older woman’s bones and sent them all a dream of whatever they liked best that they wouldn’t remember when they woke.

There was a dying man in barrack seven. He—well, they were all dying—but this man was too far gone for Aziraphale to do anything about. Death silently passed through the body and took the soul with it. All that was left was a message scratched into the rotting rafter beam: “There is just cause for fear on the day of judgment, as God will have me to answer to.”

Aziraphale slowly walked out.

\---

Crowley impatiently shifted in his seat. Rain drummed on the roof of the Bentley and ran down the windows in rivulets. Beside him, in the passenger seat, sat a lumpy leather bag. The steering wheel dug into his chest as he hunched over it, glowering at the long line of cars ahead. Their red taillights flickered on the wet pavement and reflected off his crooked sunglasses. The traffic finally let up as the drivers in front of him simultaneously decided it might be better to pull over to the side of the road and think about the oven which they had probably left on. 

Crowley sped past the stopped cars and shivered in the cold. He wished the weather would turn up soon; it was the third week of April yet the chill of winter still hovered in the air.

The road veered sharply left up ahead, morphing from smooth asphalt to gravel that crunched under the wheels of the Bentley. Surrounded by manicured lawns, and tacky statues of bored lions, stood a red brick compound. The driveway wound around the back of the building, and Crowley managed to put a satisfying scratch on one of the more expensive cars as he backed into a parking space specifically marked for the use only for one of the heads of the _Waffen-SS_. 

With an air of self-bestowed importance, Crowley hefted the leather bag out of the car, slammed the car door, and marched off at a brisk pace across the grass. He dug his snakeskin shoes into the turf with a meaningful twist of his heel as he passed an especially belligerent sign telling him to Keep Off The Grass! The bolted double doors opened easily under Crowley’s touch, and he let himself into the dusty stairwell that snaked its way up to the upper floor. Down a hall of maroon carpet and—there! Perfect. Crowley walked into a room marked “control” and clicked the door shut behind him.

The room was dark and small and rather cozy, actually, now that he paid attention to it, and the musty smell reminded him of Aziraphale’s bookshop. He set the bag down with a thump, unzipped it with careful fingers and placed its contents on the metal table before him with a clang. Oh, this was going to be _fun_.

Exactly 23 minutes later, the presentation room filled with restless bodies of various members of the Nazi party. They spoke in muffled undertones, voices heavy with exhaustion, and strained smiles hiding the anticipation of a new educational film on the power of the Third Reich. The screen flickered as the projector coughed itself to life. The soldiers waited, clipboards in hand, pens poised above the questionnaires they had been instructed to fill out during the film. 

Slowly, the conference room darkened and, emblazoning the screen, the words “The Great Dictator” appeared in a proud font. The movie began and to their surprise, instead of being greeted by the familiar voice of the Führer and multiple shots of huge crowds hailing him, they were staring at the face of a dinky man obviously dressed as Adolf Hitler but shouting complete gibberish and something about sauerkraut into a microphone.

The party members exchanged fearful and confused glances. By the time Charlie Chaplin was playing with an inflatable globe and portraying Hitler as a sassy child with a serious power complex, only one man was left, and he was leaning back in his seat and grinning under his sunglasses. He left through the back door shortly before angry guards stormed into the room, upending the foldable chairs, their mustaches bristling. 

Crowley flew out of the parking lot, the Bentley kicking up gravel and dust.

**Author's Note:**

> -sorry im an exhausted asshole & cant be bothered to think of interesting chapter titles or summaries xoxo pls forgive  
> -chapter 2 should be up in a couple days
> 
> -eternal thanks to my beautiful jess for smacking me on the butt every time i needed encouragement


End file.
